BBC Digging for Britain fans took to Twitter and asked the same thing as they tuned into the programme. Viewers quizzed if the show’s latest offering was a repeat.

One viewer asked: “So… Question for @theAliceRoberts… Digging For Britain tonight; is this a new series or can I water the garden?” Professor Alice wrote back swiftly and showed she hadn’t lost her sense of humour when she quipped: “The garden is calling!”

Disappointed, the prospective viewer joked back: “Darn it!… And it was such a good excuse.” Another was also hungry for new episodes, enquiring: “You’ve not made a new series for a while, is there one in the pipeline?”

Alice replied: “We’re in the middle of filming series 12 right now. In fact, I’ll be donning high vis and steelies and visiting a (top secret) site tomorrow!” She added that the team make sure to create a new series every year.

Another tweeted: “Repeat. But I’m watching anyway because, well, it’s Prof Alice!”

For now, viewers have had to be content with a repeat episode – but it proved suspenseful as viewers learnt what went into Henry VIII’s “industrial scale fraud”. It was revealed during the show that he deliberately ordered workers to tamper with coins, deceptively adding copper alloy to the silver.

Digging for Britain revealed how King Henry VIII “got away with” selling fake silver coins.

Although it was much cheaper to work with than the real thing, Henry developed an almost foolproof technique which made the coins indistinguishable from the real thing.

In the meantime, he was adding “more and more” copper into the coins until just 30 per cent was pure silver.

First-time viewers were on the edge of their seats as they were introduced to the cunning way he avoided detection, despite having “a desperate need to control every aspect of coinage”.

“We’re going to mint our own dodgy coins to see how it’s done!” announced the team experts as they built their own forge and prepared to follow in the deceptive royal’s footsteps.

It wasn’t until the late stages of the process when they had a lightbulb moment, exclaiming: “That’s how he got away with it!”

Soaking blanks in the acid caused the silver colour to leech to the top, meaning they couldn’t tell the difference between a genuine coin and a 70 per cent copper counterfeit – until they investigated further.

Scratching it to simulate a few months of wear and tear quickly revealed Henry’s “deception”, as his image on the coin started to turn a rusty colour.

“Henry was known as ‘old copper nose’ – and that’s why!” they explained.

Foreign merchants started refusing to accept the coins as they gradually realised what was going on, causing the economy to plummet – and the damage was only truly undone by his daughter Elizabeth’s honesty years on.

One fan tweeted: “Watching an item on the excellent #DiggingForBritain about Henry VIII diluting his silver currency with copper. My wife commented, ‘He was the Donald Trump of his age’. Couldn’t help agreeing.”